


Delicate Construction

by GreenJacks



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Office, Break Up, Bruce Has Issues, Consent Issues, Dark, Drama, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Established Relationship, Hate Sex, Love and Hate Issues, M/M, Plot, Unhealthy Relationships, Violent Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-22
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-10-09 05:34:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10405035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenJacks/pseuds/GreenJacks
Summary: They always fight. For reasons that will one day kill them both.It doesn't scare Bruce, because Jack is only ever gone for a few days before he comes crawling back to him.And then one day, he doesn't.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Modern day office AU: Jack Napier (Joker) and Bruce Wayne.  
> Warning on Tags. Disclaimer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dick sort of figures now wasn’t a good time to open the door.

When Bruce starts shouting, he quietly lets the knob go. Grayson already has his earphones on, music loud to volume nine.

It does little to drown out the windows smashing. Does too little to smother the china breaking, and it does nothing to mute the jaws snapping.

They scream, and when they do, it sounds like war. As if shouting louder at the other could best their reprehensible ego. Someone called the police in. _Once_ , it was probably their neighbor. Good old lady, not too much good with kids. She didn’t like Jack.

Then again, nobody really likes Jack.

_“When you’re done being a complete, damn psycho-”_

Dick hears the voice roar when the door finally swings open. The hinge groans under the strain, he wondered if they were ever going to be friends with the repairman. Bruce stomps out, and his palms are bleeding.

He shuts the door after him. It takes a few low sunken seconds to notice Dick beside the corridor, sitting on his back against the wall. He pulls his earphones down.

“Keys.” The man demanded.

Dick scowled. “I don’t think you should be driving.”

“Keys, Richard.”

 _Damn._ He has the voice thing going on. Dick handed over his keys.

“I’ll be back around eleven. Tell Alfred we’re not having dinner at home.”

“You’re gonna’ leave him like that?”

Bruce stiffly wipes his hands against the hem of his shirt. He looks a mess, and Dick really doesn’t want to ask about this. But he needed to go in there, because hey, he had his laptop on the kitchen table, and had a pretty clear vision of what he was going to be facing when he opened that door.

And nobody really likes Jack. Especially not a crazy one that had all of his buttons pushed to the limit.

“He’s going to run away again, you know.”

The man doesn’t bother to answer the question anyway. And soon, Dick is left in the corridor, alone.

Grayson turns the knob around, opening the door with a thick screech. Oh, there’s blood on the floor. _Again._ He can follow the trails, they’re pretty straight forward. Always leads to the same thing, a place, or the same one. Jack Napier.

He’s still there. Crouched among broken plates, his sick green eyes wide open.

His palms were bleeding.

 

* * *

 

 

“You’re not normal. And he’s not normal. You’re both not normal.”

She says it like a fact. Too easily, and he can’t respect that. Maybe it was because he was just a twisted jerk. It had credibility.

“You don’t like him.” Bruce questioned, throwing the ice away.

“Never did.”

To be honest, Selina didn’t bother spending much thought on the matter. She can smell a bad apple when she sees one, and that was exactly what Jack was. The last she saw of the man was at a conference at LexCom. They signed a promotional paper together for the Gotham Winter Fashion Week that was scheduled to happen in the Globe Convention Center before October. This was only two weeks away.

It did also remind her, if anything, of all the work that needed to be finished by the end of Saturday. If Bruce was going to mope in her office, she’d rather he grabbed a tape measure and help her with the floor planning.

But she can’t ask that. He was grieving.

And he was her boss too.

“I still don’t know why you’re with him.” She ends up saying, drawing a line over the fabric.

“I’m not ‘ _with_ ’ him.”

Selina Kyle. Master of cynical eye rolling. If only they had trophies for her talent.

“You fucked him.” She ignored Bruce’s warning stare. “In _front_ of your _girlfriend_.”

And how does she know this? Oh, because she was the _unfortunate_ Fashions Department Director, who was unlucky enough run in on the moment. And how could she not have? Seraphine was screaming her head off in his office that night, and Selina Kyle would have thought she was getting murdered if she didn’t ditch her coffee that moment and kick the door down the next second.

Only to witness, _well._ That was another story to recall when she would be half drunk and dying with vodka martini.

She blames it entirely on Bruce Wayne of course. The public doesn’t know what exactly happened that night, because money is power, and power can keep a lot of things secret.

“Speaking of whom, what is she on?” Selina sniffs, straightening out the fabric. “I haven’t seen her since.”

Bruce turns a stiff face around.

“In the hospital.”

“Okay. Look, I’m really not going to ask anything further on this, whatever shit you have going on.”

“Yes. _Please, don’t._ ”

“But have you considered, gee, I don’t know. Breaking it up with him?”

“No.”

If Bruce curled his fists back any tighter, it would break through his fingers. Kyle finished measuring all the designs out, by the time she feels caring enough to look him in the eye. The man was still sitting there like a statue, behind her messy office desk.

“He’s mine.”

It’s hard not to sound insane. _God. He was starting to talk like him._

Now he couldn’t say anything back at Selina, who was giving him the expression.

“I can’t leave him. And he can’t leave me.” Wayne mutters on now. There’s no sense in his words and he can see it, clear as day. “He always comes back to me.”

“What if he doesn’t?”

“He does. He always does.”

And he knows everything is wrong. But they can’t stop.

“Because I’m always there, waiting for him to come back.”

 

* * *

 

 

Knowing what the tongue likes to taste is a very personal thing. He was probably high that night. _The first night._

When he came barging in with a crumpled suit, missing two buttons and his hat. It’s never the heat of the moment thing. Everything is delicately constructed with Bruce Wayne.

So the first night, when he threw him on the bed and clawed his belt off. There was a brief moment of doubt. And then Jack Napier bites on his lips, the next second his head stops thinking.

Because his tongue tastes like sugar, and it fills his buds with the scent of sex. Do they need clothes? Does their skin need to touch? Whose pleasure does it matter more? Is there sense in questioning these? He stabs the colorless skin with his thumbs, tearing it down to their bare bones.

And the sound he makes. The smile he paints. His lipsticks are bludgeoned, his canines are bleeding. Bruce realizes he probably shouldn’t have punched him, but he doesn’t feel sorry at all. His hands rummage through the yellow dress shirt, pulls the ribbons of purple away from his neck.

When they grind, they grind like animals. When they rut, they rut like beasts. They kiss, they touch. They see the reds on their bodies. They can identify the thirteen colors of shame. The way his lean legs wrap around his hips, the way they rest on the bones, are lewd. It’s the small details that matter big in his mind. Details like the muffled squeal inside the man’s throat when he pulses into the unprepared entrance. Like the groan he spits out when he feels the fire, he can feel the blood rushing into his length faster than the July wilds. He moves, pistons flaring, arms and hands tangled on the bed sheet, wrapped in the smell of semen and sweat.

_Fuck._

Jack breathes. Bruce can see his rib cages move under him. It’s a slow hard rhythm. Every thrust makes his back sting up, and Bruce can just be a grumpy jerk when he grabs the man’s pelvis and pulls him down, pinning him back onto his cock.

Oh there is no consideration in their heat. It was just the way they are. Bruce pulls his head up by the snake green hair, up into the lights that seep through the blinders. It was midnight and everything outside is neon, Jack grinned through the fluorescent light as if he was pretending there was no blood dripping down his thighs.

_Do you love me?_

Bruce dives down to kiss him without answering. Jack doesn’t protest. He allows him to bite on his tongue.

 _No._ The bigger man answered into his mouth.

 _Good._ He smiled. _Kiss me harder._

And he did.

 

* * *

 

 

He burnt his shoulder inside the shower. Jack barges out, leaving the steaming water running behind him. The man slips on the tile, and crashes into the towel rack.

The kids complained about the slippery floors once in a few weeks. It was going to kill one of them, one day. But today he doesn’t die. Today wasn’t the day he miserably wacked his head against the mirror and ends up killing himself. No, today was the day when Jack Napier is fucking insane, and an insane man has no tolerance for pain.

He stumbles up, and rushes out of Wayne’s bathroom without even wiping himself dry. There is water dripping all over him as he walks across the living room, still naked and shoulders red.

A madman stares wide eyed at him from the mirror. Green hair wet, eyes bloodshot. Jack grabs the mirror by its side and pulls it closer to his face. Strange, he doesn’t remember everything. He doesn’t remember why he was trembling.

He needed to get out before the whispers start screaming.

The man fumbles with his pants, he’s not even sure they are his. It was black, he couldn’t tell. It takes another five minutes to bang his way around everything before smashing his body against the door and pushing it open to get out.

He steps outside the building in nothing but Bruce Wayne’s business shirt and a pair of black ankle zip skinnies.

There is nothing in his pockets but a twenty dollar note, an Yves Saint Laurent lipstick, and a cell phone with no batteries.

 

* * *

 

 

2 a.m.

Naturally the apartment is empty. Jason never was a home kid. He was probably out in a nightclub somewhere, drinking himself to death. Harvey Bullock is getting tired of picking him up on the streets, ‘ _bout high time the boy learned to man up and grow some responsibility._ Was what he said.

Grayson was probably doing some late night work in the penthouse. He had his own share of things to do. A vague memory mentioned that he might be out of the city for a couple of days. Barbra would still be staying in Wayne Manor. She didn’t like moving her computers. Alfred would be there too, since they didn’t have dinner here tonight.

It wasn’t much of a house anyway, though. Alfred asked multiple times if he wanted the old retainer to start taking care of the apartment as well, and every time he did, Bruce politely refused after long hours of thinking the suggestion over.

It was more Jack’s apartment than his. Sure he paid for it, paid for the furnishings, and the bills. But it was Jack’s. Bruce always found it a little funny that the house could be his, when the only thing Jack owned inside this wretched apartment was a box full of cosmetics, two boots, and a small wardrobe full of intricate suits.

Wayne sits down on the cold sofa. The cleaning lady was in here, she took care of all the mess he remembers leaving behind. She can’t do anything about the broken TV though. He stares at the LED screen for a long time, fiddling with his phone.

The apartment was something that just happened. Sure the kids come and go sometimes. It was closer to the main city than the manor or the penthouse. Jack never seemed to mind, he liked the boys. Even though nobody could really tell apart what he liked or what he didn’t like.

Bruce called in Doctor Quinzel, knowing she’d still be awake. She answers the phone with a degree of fatigue, anxious to answer his questions, get them over with and cut the call. So he makes it quick, learns Jack wasn’t there, and puts the phone down again.

_Where could he be now?_

Well, it’s hard to answer. Everything is hard with him. He deliberately makes it harder. The man sighs into the air, head leaned backwards and resting against the couch. It’s cold in here. It always was. Everything is minimal, television for news, a couch, a table, and utensils. No decorations, no lamp, no picture frames, and no rugs. No color in the walls, monotone floors, all glass marble and porcelain.

Everything to pretend it was a house.

_Not enough to feel like home._

 

This _house_ was making Jack sick. And Bruce Wayne knows it.

 

* * *

 

 

The conference is scheduled early morning. Barbra catches him dozing off during rehearsal. She has her coffee colored stockings on, it means business. So she wasn’t going to let it slip when she clearly saw him snoring, no matter how light and soft it was.

“What were you doing last night?” There is a hint of concern in her voice. She’s a good person, on the whole. Bruce only feels a tiny bit of guilt for snoozing because of this.

“I think I need a doctor.” He replied, a tad bit lazy in his wording. “For my insomnia.”

Barbra hums in a rather strict, skeptical way. “I’ll call Alfred to get your GP to visit the office this evening.”

“Okay. Thank you.” He waves the topic away. They both know it’s an excuse.

Everything would have been much easier if Jack actually showed up for the conference. But time ticked, and nobody can see even a string of green hair flying around the room. He goes through the meeting with impatience bubbling up his throat, and vents it out in the form of intense table tapping with his fingers.

Luthor doesn’t appreciate this show of vulgar emotion. _No, not one bit_. And when the conference ends, they sit there on the big boss tables staring at each other in stark silence.

“Where the heck is he?” Bruce gives in first, breaking the ice.

Lex twitches an eye.

“Who?”

“Mister Jack Napier.”

“Oh. _Him._ ” The corporate giant rolled his eyes, almost wanting to pretend he didn’t know the name. “Well, I was rather hoping _he_ would show up with _you_. It crushes me to say this, but when I pay my human resources, I expect them to show up in places where I pay them to show up.”

He has a bite in his voice, which also meant he really had no idea.

“Wayne.” Luthor drops his voice. The man knows what pitch to use when he was trying to be cold. “I don’t care about your personal life, but let us make this clear.”

“Am I going to dislike you more after hearing this?”

“No more than I already dislike you. But it will become more, if your questionable relationship with my executive advisor keeps affecting the progress of our work.”

Lesser men and women would feel the sting and edge of his words. It would cut them, like meat on a slab. Wayne shakes the wound away, expression indifferent.

“I advise you start considering a new man for the job.” He answers, lips stiff.

“Mister Napier is a fucking lunatic.” Lex Luthor mutters out loud, unashamed to say it. He stands up, thinning out the crumpled line of his velvet suit. “But he’s the best in his line of work. And I’m not losing Napier from my board because of your _sick obsession_ with him.”

Bruce stands up, his chair screaming behind him. They hold their eyes steady, not even a breath out of line. Never the one to back down from a fight, it’s the reason they were high atop in the first place. So they walk up to each other, jaw hard.

“ _My obsession_?” Wayne snarled. “He ran over my girlfriend with a car, Luthor.”

To this, Lex smirked. His lips twist into a dark line, a mocking hand patting Bruce on the shoulder before they shortly disappear, along with his turned back now exiting the conference room.

“I suggest you start looking for a new girlfriend then.”

 

* * *

 

 

The reason is simple, he never slept with Seraphine.

 

She suspected it was because Bruce Wayne had an uncomfortable relationship with her father, after the whole fiasco with finance and sponsorship they argued over the new shopping department downtown for the project.

That’s why she spent so many weeks trying to find the right moment, to talk to him, coax him into start sharing a bed with her.

The reason was simple. He didn’t need to feel the guilt of their commitment, because he never slept with her. Seraphine never knew. She didn’t need to know. And she never would have, if only. If only she never mustered that courage to scream at Jack.

If only she picked another day to visit him in the office at night. Any day but Friday night. _That night._ And the three of them most likely know that Jack Napier probably knew she was coming. That was why he timed that kiss perfectly. Everything is a delicate construction process with Jack Napier.

So Bruce knows. Bruce knows why he should feel guilty when she screams at his face, knows why he should be sorry when she cries, and thrashes against his firm hands attempting to calm her down.

She didn’t calm down. She charged up to the green eyed lunatic and slapped him across the face. They heard him giggle, bursting into a fit of laughter. When he shoots his head up again, he has a searing red mark over his cheeks.

 _Ooh. Angry little birdie, are we?_ He playfully snaps his teeth at her, showing off the smudged lipstick out the corner of his mouth. _Someone is as jealous as darling peacock. Choo, choo, toots._

 _Seph. Don’t._ Bruce takes a step closer, only stopped short by her cold shouting again.

_Don’t. Don’t you, dare, Bruce Wayne._

He knows why he should be feeling guilty. He was supposed to feel terribly sorry. But he sees the impaling grin on Jack Napier’s face, and all the blood in his head drop, dead and cold.

 _How could you do this to me?_ She moaned. Distressed tears streaming down her face. She can’t stop it. The woman loved Bruce Wayne, true and heartfelt. She turned, sharp like a whip at the smiling man behind her. _You._

_You, filthy, freak._

_No. You don’t call him that._ Bruce intervenes, words biting out of his mouth. Her labels stick something ugly down his throat, and it makes him angry when he had no right to.

_My father will hear about this. Our contract with LexCom and Wayne Entertainment are both going down the drain. Oh yes it will. This project, is finished, and you. You._

Her hair’s a mess. She’s shaking from head to toe. But she was pointing a well manicured finger towards the pale skinned devil, eyes wide and round. She forces out a laugh, trying to imitate his jagged chuckles.

_I know all about you, Napier. They should have left you to rot in Arkham for the trash you are. An orphaned little shit that nobody wants. How dare you? My father will make sure you get dumped back in the cuckoo bin after tonight. You, repulsive, deranged, reprobate._

Something snaps for good in Bruce Wayne’s mind. It’s too deep dark and down his conscience to hear it go, but it does. He takes a step forward. And the red glare in his ice blue eyes make Seraphine step back with a sharp plunk of her high heels.

The two of them leer at the other in complete silence, only disturbed by Jack rolling around the office desk on his back, laughing in pure amusement.

Ha Ha’s, Ho Ho’s, Hee Hee’s. It’s a mad little jive in their stink of a silence.

Jack loses his breath the next second when Bruce grabs his neck, lifting him from his feet. Everything happens in the time the man’s cold fury allows it to tick. A sharp pain strings up when Bruce pushes his head down the hard surface, roughly bending him over the desk.

A pair of green eyes twitched violently, body straining against the heavy weight that suddenly pinned him down. Seraphine loses her balance and falls down on her back, her disheveled skirt sprawled over her knees. She stares wide eyed, in horror, meeting glances with the pair of greens that take six seconds to realize what was going on.

The buckle falls down faster than any one of them could have blinked otherwise. The towering man slides his fingers under the revealing thighs, stretching the entrance in a violent curve. Jack vomits out all the lumps of unsynchronized breath that was starting to choke him, tearing up at the flash of pain. His blocks of cut out laughter only becomes bigger than the screech and screaming of Seraphine Cunning, turning her head away in pure fear.

Selina Kyle rushes into the room after she kicks the locked door down. She mutters the loudest of all her curses, all the while she drags away the horrified, crying woman out of the office by her shoulders. Kyle turns to bang the door shut once she gets out, taking one last look at the lean, writhing figure squealing and moaning under the giant of a man bashing into him.

Jack Napier grins at her. She can’t wipe that expression off her memory now. It was permanently etched into her mind, and it was going to change how she looked at Bruce tomorrow.

 

It’s all delicate construction.

 

Jack continued to laugh at her just until Wayne pulled his head up to lock the both of them in a callous bite of a kiss.

 

* * *

 

 

Jeremiah Arkham never wanted to sign the release papers. He’s seen a lot of his patients come and go. He knows a sick man when he sees one. Sees how rotten their minds are.

It’s always the same, one way or another. He’s seen pedophiles, schizophrenics, MPD’s, the demented, the homicidal and the suicidal. He’s seen it all. He’s seen enough to tell apart a sane man and an insane man, no matter what the human rights activists like to philosophize about the rights to be different.

For them it wasn’t a choice of being different. Sure, you could have a fetish for something abnormal, and call it personal preferences. But say when you have a fetish for broken fingers, you don’t go and start tying up people to chairs and break their fingers without consent just so you could feel a sadistic pleasure out of it.

The difference between being insane and sane was having the ability to control who you are. So in reality, when you are deemed insane, then there was no going sane.

Everything you do from that point onwards, it just becomes a game of pretend. And the ones who you actually sign the papers for them to get out, you’re releasing a dangerous thing among the herd.

So Jeremiah Arkham never wanted to sign those release papers. He had a common name, one that was probably the most popular in the states where crime records were as high as the statue of liberty herself. John Doe.

You need a name. He remembers saying, blinking down at the blank spaces in his paper. Everyone has a name where you’re going. You’re bound to feel left out. It sounds almost like a joke, if anyone else hears it.

But the man was a special case. And he takes it like how he expected him to- in a way he didn’t expect. Arkham remembered it as the middle of April. It was raining that night, harder than it should’ve been. John Doe was sitting in the chair right across the room, folding a paper crane with his long, pale fingers.

 _I’ll steal one then._ Was his reply.

And Jeremiah Arkham really didn’t want to sign the paper.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s been a week. His secretary passed him a note saying Oswald Cobblepot go his email, and requested to inform him that he does not have what Chairman Wayne was looking for. The day starts with a failure, can’t be a good sign.

Small graces make the morning bearable. Alfred picked up his coffee, and the new suit. He changes in the office, no time to gussy up back at the penthouse.

“Miss Gordon prompted me that you weren’t sleeping well, sir.” Alfred states. “Since when?”

“Four days ago.”

And lord knows, he didn’t realize time was actually passing. It was hard to tell if the clock hands moved at all. His world was slowing down. It did that, occasionally. When Jack ran away. Everything feels slow, impassive, and blurry.

“I’ll try to get you something that would help.”

“Oh, please. No pills. Not again.” Bruce growled under his breath, massaging the bridge of his nose. His head was aching, half of it had to do with the lack of sleep, and the other half was because of his general stress level that accumulated in the recent days.

His old trusted retainer looks at him in a stilled, concerning eye, and Bruce doesn’t mind.

“Master Bruce. Is this because of Mister Napier?”

“Well now that you mention him, Mister Jack Napier _was_ supposed to be the general consultant and acting ambassador for our co-production with LexCom…” Bruce takes a sip of coffee, making an excuse to pull a face out of its bitterness. “And he’s gone.”

They could have heard Alfred sigh half way across the country probably. He pretends not to notice Bruce’s hands shaking.

“Son.”

Bruce opened his eyes. He heard the gentle voice knocking at his steps. Alfred leads him to the chair, where they sit across to each other. He can’t meet Alfred’s eyes. It was like giving away secrets that you don’t want to tell. Alfred knows this, it was the only reason why he didn’t force his way into the young Wayne’s mind.

“I am capable of putting things together. And the recent chain of events, the actions you are taking. All of them are starting to concern me.”

And he’s right. Of all the people in the world that could say those words, Alfred Pennyworth was the one most qualified. Bruce Wayne allows the words to reach him.

They both look tired. Exhausted, and dry.

“I will be putting in a request with the Commissioner. He’ll get you an address and contact number by tomorrow.” Alfred finished, leaving his seat. He nudges an assuring hand on Bruce’s shoulder.

So it happens. It doesn’t take long. It actually took shorter than what Alfred had said. As if someone was just waiting for him to ask. The answer offered in a silver platter. By the end of the evening and well into midnight, an email pops up onto Wayne’s computer from James Gordon.

 

* * *

 

 

Edward Nigma returns from the workshop, and Jack was still asleep on the couch. All those years, and he continues to sleep in the most uncomfortable positions. At least he didn’t kick down the blankets this time. Edward wasn’t good with sick people. It’s a miracle he didn’t catch Jack’s cold.

The television was on, the evening news blinking in the screen. Nigma taps his palms on the colorless cheeks, murmuring at him to wake up. Jack rustles around between the cushions before stretching himself awake.

“Back so soon?” he sang, a tad bit sarcastic. Arms out stretched to receive the plastic bag from Edward’s hands. “Thought someone pushed you off the train, and then we’re all going to be sad because you didn’t assign anyone to feed the cat when you’re gone.”

“I was running late.” Edward scoffed. “And I have a fridge, Napier.”

Jack purred. “I can’t cook.”

He pulls the hamburger up from all the wrappers and napkin, scooting over so Edward could plop down beside him. The glassed man has a bottle of beer dangling between his fingers.

There are figures shaking hands on the screen. He’s a recognizable man, even on cable. Lex Luthor, and a giant banner hanging over their LexCom logo.

“It’s been five days.” Edward mused, downing the bottle. “Aren’t you supposed to be back in office?”

The paler man takes a glance down at the broken cell phone on the coffee table. It looks dead. Even if it was a piece of gadget.

“I wonder if Lexie wants to kill me.”

“I won’t be surprised if he does.”

“He will. Eventually, one day. I just need to ask him when, don’t want him killing me on an important day. Like my wedding, now imagine that, Eddie.” Jack giggled.

They spend more time on the news, watching the mundane things pass by. The world spins in a fashion that doesn’t care what happened yesterday. It just goes on, that it was the way things are, and will be.

 

Napier is too absorbed with voices inside his head that he misses a beat when Edward approaches him with a louder yell.

“Napier! It’s yours.” He shouts from the phone.

When did Eddie even have a land line? Jack tilts his head. “Mine?”

“Yeah. Your call. It’s Wayne.”

Oh, it’s Wayne. “Brucie?” The green haired man jumps away from the sofa. “Brucie darling?”

Edward throws him the phone, and disappears upstairs. Jack purrs into the phone, loud and happy.

“ _Darling!_ Is that really _you_?”

A long silence follows. Jack’s eyes thin. His smile only grows thicker.

“You know, I was just on my way back, too.”

_‘Liar.’_

The voice comes through the phone. And it’s cold, thick, and aching. Everything Bruce Wayne was. It was the same, dark voice that occupied too much space in Jack Napier’s head. A high pitched moan echoes through his throat, a sound that was stuck somewhere in ecstasy and hostility.

“That’s cold.”

_‘I know a lie when you tell one, Napier.’_

“A genius aren’t’cha? You deserve a cookie, Brucie.” Jack smooches the phone, pecking his lips at the receiver. Wayne goes silent for a few seconds.

‘ _Where are you?’_

“I thought you were the genius? This is certainly interesting though, darlin’. Normally you wait it out until I come crawling back to you. Are we playing a new game? New rules?”

‘ _This isn’t a game. I’m coming to pick you up.’_

“Well then, I’ll set the rules this time sweetheart.”

‘ _Don’t. Step on the line. I’m not in the mood to play.’_

“When were you ever?” Jack flashed his fangs. His laughter croaked. “I know you’ll play.”

‘ _I’m not going to.’_

When were words ever simple? It was like opening a can of worms. It stinks, and their interaction always reeks of ego and madness. Something along the fine line of reason and depravity. And Jack, Jack smiles like he already finished hearing an answer.

He had five days, dying in his fever, to think about all this. He reached a conclusion, and Bruce Wayne was never going to like anything that came out of his mind.

“Meet me at the Bowery Train station, West gate. Midnight. Love you pretty boy. See ya.”

And just like that. He cuts the phone. Probably knowing why Bruce Wayne wanted to kill him more than Luthor could ever imagine wanting to.

 

* * *

 

 

Jack Napier wasn’t a heavy smoker. He didn’t like coffee, because it made things faster, and he didn’t like cigarettes because it slowed him down. He often imagined himself smoking Hookah to death.

But all the baby talk wears him down, and he has a cigarette burning between his lips that night. The man stands there by the platform, under an ill designed lamp.

Bruce Wayne didn’t smoke. He drank a lot, actually drinks a lot more as of recent, but he never smoked. He liked to think himself healthy. If his mind wasn’t, then the least he could do was make a healthy body.

He stood there by the platform, watching the smoke disappear into nothing.

They stare at each other. Hard and silent, from across the train platform.

They were too different, too apart, too much of a contrast to say they knew the other.

“You look sick.” The dark haired man opens his mouth first.

The other man chuckled.

“I had a fever.”

“How long?”

“Five days. Give or take a day.” He spits the cigarette out. “Why, worried about the damn psycho, are we darling?”

Bruce didn’t answer. He knows ignoring him hurts more than denying.

“You know, I’ve had some time. To think about you, my darling sweetheart.” The man goes on, tapping his borrowed boots onto the platform tiles. “And about me. About us.”

“There is no ‘us’.”

Jack frowned at the retort. He doesn’t look hurt. Bruce Wayne wonders at this point, if anything _, anything_ he said would _ever_ hurt him.

“Careful. We’re still negotiating business partners, ya know.”

“Then you really should be back in the office, Napier. Luthor needs you back.”

He can see the green eyes thinning into a Cheshire arch from where he was standing. The midnight train information starts echoing across the platform.

“What about you?” Jack asks. “Do you need me back?”

Bruce grits his teeth. He can feel his jaws tightening under his molars.

“Do you want me back?”

The man still doesn’t answer. Something grips at his throat, and if he opened his mouth now, he was going to bleed.

“ _Mmm._ See,” The green eyed man throws his head back, laughing away at the sky. The notifications for the next train pop up in the information board. “Knew you couldn’t answer, you really are always such a pussy, Bruce Wayne.”

_Ha Ha Ha._

The chill takes a step back when the train screeches at the rails, drowning out the laughter. The metal giant slides through the platform and stops between the two men standing apart from each other at the ends of their ground. Bruce watches with cold distinction, his line of sight blocked by the train and its doors opening.

Neither of them gets on the train. The doors close after a few minutes, and starts off. The tail end disappears after a few seconds, and both of them were still standing there, right where they were before. Meeting eyes again.

“I’m ending us, Bruce.”

There is no wind in Gotham. Wayne can’t pretend not to have heard it. He hears it. The voice, and the grinning face. He can’t see his own expression, but he wasn’t smiling like the other was.

“I go back tomorrow, and we become what you just said. ‘There is no ‘us.’” Then he giggles, high pitched and pathetic. “I’m going to miss your cock though. You were a good fuck. Well, bye bye Brucie. Au revoir.”

 

“What the _fuck_?”

There is no pretense for this anger. It feels hot. It feels crazy, and it was erupting into his head. He can feel his blood regurgitating. Jack Napier still stands on the other side, waving his fingers at him.

 

Was he serious? His existence itself was a joke. But no, no. Bruce wasn’t thinking straight. He didn’t want to think straight. What he wanted was to run up there and push him down the stairs. Break a leg maybe, and hurl the crazy fucker into his car. They’ll drive home, pretend this conversation never happened. He’ll wake up next morning, and Jack Napier will be beside him, kissing the bridge of his nose like a lover would.

So Bruce Wayne starts taking his steps forward, running because he knows why Jack chose this timing to wave him goodbye.

It’s a delicate construction with them.

The second train comes into the platform, screeching to a halt and throwing Bruce Wayne back. Jack can hear him shouting his name over the sound of his own laughter. He steps into the train this time, moving closer to the windows on the other side.

Oh he loves it when Wayne was angry. And right now, he looked as angry as goddamn bull. He watches as the train toots off away from the station, and laughs away the image of Bruce Wayne jumping down the rails and running after the train as far as he could manage to go.

 

Just until the metal clanker disappears into the tunnel, and neither of them could see each other’s teeth anymore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
